- Image via Wikipedia
It’s the year 2020, and HIV no longer exists; an effective vaccine has been discovered. Ok, it’s unpredictable, but the dream may be closer to reality than you think.
Picture this in the very near future: we’re in a remote village in Africa, there is a line of people waiting to receive HIV vaccine, improving their lives forever by eradicating the disease that has killed millions in their country. Doctor Santiago Moreno-Guillén of Spain, along with a few other colleagues, is present in the room. However, they are not the only ones who bear witness to this historical event. You see with the help of a small webcam connected to his laptop, the event is being broadcasted to colleagues Julio Montaner in Canada , and Bernard Hirschel in Switzerland and live to the world on the internet. Dr. Moreno-Guillén answers viewer questions from around the globe.
How did we get to this rosy future in only 10 short years? Our hero Dr. Moreno-Guillén would tell you that this journey may not have been possible without collaboration with colleagues and access to information from every corner of the world. Every article written, every journal kept and every idea and opinion presented to the research community has helped advance HIV knowledge and led to this momentous vaccine discovery. This network of ideas and people shaped research agendas, and helped form new collaborations leading ever closer to the answer. He knows key people helped shape his decisions and eased his access to resources. When tough problems presented themselves, there was always someone in his network to ask. He knows that pharmaceutical companies helped organize and make possible introductions to other key scientists, to help him forward his vision. And without the rich collaborative history, this day might have been delayed for far too long.
Now, back to year 2010. Our teams here at Lnx Pharma and Lnx Research take pride in perhaps bringing this dream a few steps closer to reality. Science discovery is not an individual sport, it’s a collective activity. Groups of scientists, educational and research institutions, governments, non-profits and private enterprise all work together in pursuit of a vaccine. But that process is often disjointed and haphazard.
So maybe you won’t mind, dear reader, if we share our vision on how we believe we can help accelerate scientific discovery — and potentially, cure or prevent significant disease categories.
Take for example human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) research: wading through and understanding the relationships between the more than 100,000 researchers involved is daunting. To keep up with the nearly 9,000 HIV articles a year, a person would have to read up to 25 papers every single day. And to try and extract a “tiger team” of experts who could really make a difference or a scientific breakthrough? You’d have educated guesses at best, based solely on the publications and the Rolodex of your chief science officer.
So this is where we come in.
We’re frustrated by inefficiency and inaccuracy, so we prefer to use a little science of our own to figure out the sweet spot – the sweet spot in this case being influential clusters of researchers in a disease category. Using Social Network Analysis (SNA), we analyze thousands of articles and other pieces of data specific to an entire global disease area, and what we extract is key centers of excellence, key researchers that are in key roles to access information and other people quickly. Et voila! A ready-made network with quick access to the most meaningful information and resources.
What would you do with that power? Well, for sure you could have a great cocktail party or start a bunch of Second Life virtual research teams. But more likely, you’d probably find that ideas move faster, research obstacles are overcome more quickly, and the overall time to cure (not to mention, time to market) is reduced. And that’s definitely a good thing.
And by the way, according to our analysis of the HIV research category, Doctors Santiago Moreno-Guillén of Spain, Julio Montaner of Canada , and Bernard Hirschel of Switzerland are power-hitters on the team. If you want the rest of the batting lineup, give us a call.
